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COMMUNISM AT BIRKBECK Conference Review: "On the Idea of Communism," Birkbeck College, 13-15 March 2009
The conference "On the Idea of Communism" took place at Birkbeck College, in the University of London, on 13-15 March 2009. There were twelve speakers, and nearly a thousand people in attendance. The conference, which was organized by Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou, was intended, as !Zizek said in his opening remarks, not to engage in discussion of actual political programs, or to intervene in the harsh realities of day-by-day social and political struggles, but to consider how the philosophical idea, or ideal, of communism might be revitalized and made useful in the twenty -first century. Zizek said that the time for guilt over the crimes of the twentieth century was over, and that today we need to reclaim the name of "communism" from the ill repute into which it has sunk. For my part, I think that this impulse is altogether correct. Many crimes were undoubtedly committed by Communist parties, or in the name of communism, throughout the twentieth century. But capitalism, too, is guilty of many crimes. And where communism has been thoroughly demonized, capitalism still refuses to acknowledge its own crimes or to show any repentance for them. Given the increasingly untenable situation in which we live today, exacerbated by the current financial disaster, communism may well be an idea whose time has finally come.
Of course, part of the appeal of events such as this conference is simply that they give us an opportunity to see academic superstars in action. From this perspective, "On the Idea of Communism" did not disappoint. Slavoj Zizek was in fine form, manic and excited, and so full of a kind of outward-directed energy that I didn't really mind his overbearingness. Gianni Vattimo, whom I had never seen before (and of whose works I have read only a little) was quite a charmer, in a humorously self-deprecating way. Terry Eagleton reveled in the role of the lone British commonsense empiricist in a room otherwise full of Continental dialecticians. Antonio Negri was warm and animated, while Jacques Rancière was admirably meditative. Alain Badiou served as a sort of eminence grise, dominating the proceedings as a central reference point even when he wasn't...